Polar adds to its lineup with MLBPA, NFLPA deals

Polar Mobile chief executive Kunal Gupta has never met Jose Bautista or Peyton Manning, but he’s got big plans for turning the Toronto Blue Jays slugger and the Pro Bowl Indianapolis Colts quarterback into even bigger stars on small mobile screens around the world.

Polar Mobile has signed a pair of multi-year licensing agreements with the Major League Baseball Players Association and NFL Players Inc.(the licensing and marketing subsidiary of the National Football League Players Association) to develop mobile applications that will showcase some of the most famous football and baseball players in the world.

For Polar, the new agreements — when combined with a similar agreement signed in December with the National Hockey League Players Association — represent a major evolution for the Toronto-based application developer, as it seeks to become a global player in the development and distribution of mobile content.

Under the terms of the agreements, announced Tuesday, Polar will develop smartphone and tablet applications for the players’ associations that will showcase the athletes and individual superstars, outside the shadows of their respective leagues.

“It’s about connecting fans with the players, versus fans with the game,” Mr. Gupta said.
“The goal of licensing these rights for Polar is to move up the value chain to take a more active role in defining the mobile opportunity for these professional athletes.”

Polar has established itself as one of the brightest stars in Canada’s technology startup community by developing a mobile platform that helps publishers, including properties such as Sports Illustrated, The Hockey News and Wired magazine, distribute content on smartphones and tablets. About 40% of Polar’s nearly 1,000 applications are sports-related.

In the case of the NFLPA, the union was looking for a way to market its players directly to fans in the midst of declining interest in fantasy football, said Keith Gordon, president of NFL Players Inc. “Fantasy football has been very good for our sport and very good for our athletes because it really raises their profile, and social media has done the same thing,” he said.

Mobile applications and other digital content enables players to have a direct line to their fan bases, said Richard Powers, an expert in sports marketing at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

However, that access comes with added risks.

“Fans don’t relate to management or the league; they relate to the players,” Mr. Powers said. “This allows the players themselves to take a more active role. The risk of that is they’re going to have to be careful. Reputation is everything, and you can destroy a reputation with one bad tweet.

The deal will also not preclude players from cutting their own deals with mobile application companies. Some players, such as Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco, have already developed mobile applications.

While Major League Baseball has established itself as a leader in digital content, especially in the area of video streaming, the league sometimes falls short when it comes to enabling a direct relationship between fans and players, said Michael Amin, director of digital for the MLBPA.

“They have their own goals, and we have full respect for the way they operate their business, but I think that if we really want to improve that player-fan connection and get the player presence out there digitally, we’re going to have to spearhead that and really take control of that operation ourselves,” he said.

Both Mr. Gordon and Mr. Amin downplayed the significance of mobile applications being able to communicate directly to fans in the event of a labour dispute between their unions and the leagues. (The collective bargaining agreement between the MLB and MLBPA expires in December).

“For us, having as many platforms as we can out there to communicate any kind of news or updates is important,” Mr. Amin said.

“This has to do with any message coming out of the players association, and is not just related to negotiations towards a CBA. The goal of these products is far less focused on getting our organization’s message out, but rather it’s about getting the players’ messages out.”